On one occasion, Angelou spontaneously started reciting Robert Burns to her dinner guests. "You could see her delight in his words. It was in her face. It was in her eyes. It was in her voice itself," Gillespie said. "What knocked me out about Maya was she had this amazing ability: She remembered word-for-word those words that mattered to her- not just her words, but the words of others."

Gillespie recalled hearing the poem Angelou would read at President Bill Clinton's 1993 inauguration, "On The Pulse of Morning." She read it to Gillespie over the phone before the event. "By the time she finished, I was in tears and really silenced," Gillespie said. "I really almost didn't know what to say I was so stunned and in awe of her. And finally she said, 'Did you like it?' I said to her, 'There are no words. It is extraordinary. You're extraordinary.'"

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Poet, performer and political activist Maya Angelou has died after a long illness at her home in Winston-Salem, N.C. She was 86. Born in St. Louis in 1928, Angelou grew up in a segregated society that she worked to change during the civil rights era. Angelou, who refused to speak for much of her childhood, revealed the scars of her past in I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, the first of a series of memoirs.

Writer, poet, and civil rights activist Maya Angelou has been awarded the nation’s highest civilian honor. President Obama presented the Wake Forest professor with the Presidential Medal of Freedom during a ceremony yesterday. Mr. Obama said Angelou’s work has spoken to millions:

"By holding on, even amid cruelty and loss, and then expanding to a sense of compassion and ability to love…. By holding on to her humanity, she has inspired countless others who have known injustice and misfortune in their own lives."

Maya Angelou lived in a rambling yellow house just down the road from Wake Forest’s campus. A few hours after she passed away inside, people drove by slowly. Some pointed out the window. Everyone was keeping a respectable distance.

Angelou was renowned for many things, including hosting large parties in the house. Most Aprils, Angelou even held a class here.

Dr. Maya Angelou moved to North Carolina in 1981 and Bill Ferris, senior associate director of the Center For The Study of The American South at UNC-Chapel Hill, says she found her place here.

“There are so many people here, John Hope Franklin, so many gifted writers and intellectual voices for the black experience over the years," Ferris said. "She found North Carolina a good fit for her love. She kept a place in New York City, but her home most of the year was here in North Carolina.”